Deadly armed attack stalls containment of Ebola outbreak

Congolese rebels killed 15 civilians and abducted a dozen children in
an attack at the epicenter of the latest deadly Ebola outbreak, Congo’s
military said Sunday, as the violence again forced crucial
virus-containment efforts to be suspended.

“It will be very hard to stop the outbreak if this
violence continues,” said the World Health Organization’s emergencies
chief, Peter Salama.

A regional WHO official told The Associated Press that it was difficult to say how long work would be affected.

Confirmed Ebola cases have reached 202 in this outbreak, including 118 deaths.

Allied Democratic Forces rebels attacked Congolese army
positions and several neighborhoods of Beni on Saturday and into
Sunday, Capt. Mak Hazukay Mongha told the AP. The U.N. peacekeeping
mission said its troops exchanged fire with rebels in Beni’s Mayangose
area.

Angry over the killings, residents carried four of the
bodies to the town hall, where police dispersed them with tear gas.
While some health workers took refuge in a local hospital, the
protesters destroyed a number of government buildings and blocked all
traffic, Congo’s health ministry said.

Vehicles of aid organizations and the U.N. mission were pelted with stones, the U.N.-backed Radio Okapi reported.

The ADF rebels have killed hundreds of civilians in
recent years and are just one of several militias active in Congo’s far
northeast.

Another deadly attack last month in Beni forced the
suspension of Ebola-containment efforts for days, complicating work to
track suspected contacts of infected people. Since then, many of the new
confirmed Ebola cases have been reported in Beni, and the rate of new
cases overall has more than doubled, alarming aid groups.

Health efforts in recent weeks had started to show results, and this new attack “will bring us back,” Dr. Michel Yao, WHO’s incident manager for Ebola in North Kivu province, said.

Work in Beni was suspended on Sunday and “tomorrow, we
don’t know yet,” Yao said, noting that the burials of victims can be
tense. “We understand. We are sympathetic. It’s not easy to lose
relatives. At the same time, it could affect the (outbreak) response.”

The attack came after two medical agents with the
Congolese army were shot dead by another rebel group — the first time
health workers have been killed in this outbreak.

Congo’s health minister called it a “dark day” for everyone fighting Ebola.

Mai Mai rebels surged from the forest and opened fire
on the unarmed agents with the army’s rapid intervention medical unit
outside Butembo city, the health ministry said.

Health workers in this outbreak, declared on Aug. 1,
have described hearing gunshots daily, operating under the armed escort
of U.N. peacekeepers or Congolese security forces and ending work by
sundown to lower the risk of attack.

Community resistance is also a problem, and Congo’s
health ministry has reported “numerous aggressions” against health
workers. Early this month, two Red Cross volunteers were severely
injured in a confrontation with wary residents in a region traumatized
by decades of fighting and facing an Ebola outbreak for the first time.

“Our agents will continue to go into the field each day
to fulfill the mission entrusted to them,” Health Minister Oly Ilunga
said. “They are true heroes, and we will continue to take all necessary
measures so that they can do their job safely.”

On Wednesday, WHO said it was “deeply concerned” by the
outbreak but that it does not yet warrant being declared a global
emergency. An outbreak must be “an extraordinary event” that might cross
borders, requiring a coordinated response. Confirmed cases have been
found near the heavily traveled border with Uganda.

In the latest example of the rumors that pose another
serious challenge to containing the virus, the health ministry said 22
young people in Butembo dug up an Ebola victim and opened the body bag
to verify that health workers had not taken organs from the body.

They ended up touching highly infectious bodily fluids,
the ministry said. “The next day, they agreed to be vaccinated,”
joining the more than 20,000 people who have received vaccinations so
far.

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